In December of 2021, residents of about 100 one-bedroom units at Foxcroft Apartments in Oklahoma City found themselves struggling to stay warm in freezing cold apartments with no heat. Their gas lines had been cut off for months and apartment owners, Foxcroft Exchange LLC and Regional Management Co., seemed to be in no hurry to fix the heat.
Surviving the winter with no warmth during a pandemic, when uncertainty and anxiety were rampant, was terrible, said former resident Janny Granados.
Some residents without heat resorted to boiling water on electric ranges, even leaving oven doors open to generate warmth. Granados and others ran as many space heaters as they could, racking up enormous electricity bills.
The longer the gas outage and colder the residents got, the angrier they became. Baron O’Connor, an organizer of Oklahoma Tenants Union , heard about the situation and started knocking on doors at Foxcroft, looking for ways the tenant union could help.
O’Connor said he thought there might be a grievance they could organize around and go from there. He and several tenants formed the Foxcroft Tenants Council. The council wrote demand letters to the landlord, notified the press of the situation and prepared a class action lawsuit.